It's good advice. But it doesn't go far enough. Taken at face value, it implies that the young lifter can hold his breath at the "bottom" of his exercise. If he's lying on his back doing a bench-press, for example, he will inhale as he lowers the bar to his chest, hold his breath as he works to get it moving upward, and exhale explosively as he pushes the bar away from him. This is surely better than holding his breath the entire time, but still dangerous in the aneurysm department and an inefficient use of Johnny's potential power. If he wants to develop maximum power and optimal health, he should never hold his breath while training. Instead, by coordinating his breathing and movement in a fluid, non-stop pattern, he can teach himself to raise his level of performance in everything he does with his body.

Johnny doesn't realize it, but while building his muscles he is also developing his ch'i. The subject is vast and an attempt to satisfactorily define ch'i is beyond the scope of this article. For our purposes here, ch'i can be described as intrinsic or internal energy that manifests as health, vitality, and physical as well as mental power.

If Johnny focused on cultivating his ch'i while he's also building strength, he could develop far greater power in and out of the gym with considerably less effort. He would also teach his body to move with an integrity and fluidity that will surprise him. As his interest in raw strength diminishes with maturity, ch'i can be something he cultivates throughout his lifetime.

Muscular effort usually gets in the way of ch'i development in martial arts like t'ai chi ch'uan, but muscles and ch'i are not mutually exclusive. If they were, the most powerful practitioners would be the weakest muscularly. There is no evidence of that. All t'ai chi practitioners must develop tremendous strength in their legs as well as control, for example, if only to have a sound foundation or root. It is the misuse of muscular strength and the insensitivity to subtle energies that often accompany raw strength that divert us from the qi development path. Johnny can have both strong muscles and powerful ch'i. This article describes the use of breathing as a part of qi development, movement mechanics, and the cultivation of internal states specifically related to the practice of t'ai chi ch'uan, but the principles described here can be applied to any physical activity with solid results.

Before addressing how this can be accomplished, let's look at why Johnny holds his breath in the first place. The most direct way to understand this mechanism, one that we share with Johnny, is to try a simple experiment. Before you read into the next paragraph, just stand up and sit back down. Maybe stand up and sit down twice. Pay attention to what you do, particularly to your breathing.

Compression: The Pneumatic Backstop
Did you, at any time in the movement, hold your breath? Why? I've asked dozens of people to try this experiment and find that 90% of them hold their breath. But what benefit do they gain from it? Why do people also hold their breath when opening up a tightly capped jar of peanut butter? Or lifting a heavy object? Or getting out of bed?

Consider the idea that we hold our breath at moments like these to create a brace, a pneumatic backstop for the torso. By holding our breath and tensing our muscles we change a loose torso into a single, solid unit against which we can push. Whether opening the jar, lifting the heavy object or standing up, the backstop provides a base.

The pneumatic backstop works on compression. Compressed air in our lungs presses against the abdomen and internal organs, and our tensed torso presses against the spine. When getting up, the tensed-torso unit acts like an automobile air bag, helping it to hold its natural position against the powerful forward pull acting on our lower or lumbar spine. We contract and compress while holding the breath, then exhale once we no longer need the support. And Voila! We are standing. It's not elegant, but good enough for average humans who are still learning to stand erect.

By studying this primitive instinct to inhale, hold, and exhale for leveraged force against the spine we can learn how pneumatic/muscular compression works in our bodies and how it effects us. We will also find that we can improve our health and performance in everything we do by not using it when we don't need it. My own study of compression during the past 17 years, which is incorporated into my much longer practice of t'ai chi ch'uan, has been pivotal in my personal wellness, overall fitness, and the satisfaction I derive from this marvelous art.

If you pay attention to your breathing whenever you get up, you will be surprised by how breathing can assist your actions. You will also be surprised to realize how many times you hold your breath unnecessarily, overcompressing your torso by tensing muscles that would feel better if integrated into a fluid process of breathing and moving together. Through this awareness, you can learn how to use pneumatic compression as your body most benefits from it.

Healthy and Unhealthy Compression
Understanding compression is critical for any physical movement, and especially meaningful to practitioners of martial arts. Anything that unnecessarily slows us when we need speed, or that tightens us when we need to relax, that fatigues us, limits our range of movement, dulls our ability to sense and respond, or keeps us from cultivating inner well-being is something we need to resolve through our practice. Misuse of compression has all these negative effects.

Right now, for example, somewhere in your body you are probably holding some small muscles in tension that you don't need to hold in order to maintain your position. These are chronic holding patterns that could be in your neck, abdomen, shoulders or elsewhere. As you take a breath and let them relax, you decrease the chronic compression that you impose on your body. It's a low-cost solution to a high-cost and stress-promoting holding pattern. You might also notice that you actually relaxed when you exhaled, not when you inhaled. This signals a clue about how to relax a little more. Without realizing it, you might be habitually restricting a small part of your breathing. I find that people tend to breathe within a fixed range that maintains unnecessary tension in them. A gentle sigh shows you how easy it is to release that unconscious yet confining habit. As you let go of your breathing and relax, you feel less pressure within.

Practitioners of t'ai chi learn to decrease chronic patterns like these throughout their bodies. If you play t'ai chi you have surely found that you can relax more than you previously thought possible. Through long and principled practice, your standing breathing patterns, muscular holding patterns, and mental busyness slowly calm down, decompressing you physically and emotionally.

The Gravity of the Matter
T'ai chi also teaches you to consciously sink, which occurs as you become increasingly sensitive to gravity. This powerful but often ignored force acts on us throughout our lifetimes. Aging brings an earthbound sort of compression that bends our spines, shrinks our vertebral disks, and accentuates the effects of our chronic holding patterns in ways that distort our bones and cause us stiffness
and pain.

Conscious sinking enables us to root in our feet to the earth as we raise the tops of our heads skyward and gently lengthen our spines. We learn to align with gravity and use it to enable more graceful and economical movement. As our muscular strength declines with age, our actions become more efficient and effective.

Practitioners of t'ai chi ch'uan accomplish results like these by replacing chronic tension throughout the body with the conscious use of tension and relaxation, and by replacing raw strength with thought-driven movement. As we do, we also distinguish the static compression that comes with being generally tense from the dynamic compression that comes with conscious tension and relaxation as well as our use of subtle pressure changes in the lower belly, which we might call "activating compression."

The use of compression and the function of breathing to facilitate compression are important tools in the practiceof t'ai chi ch'uan. By understanding compression and decompression and the allied tension and release available to us, practitioners can free our bodies and minds from a number of unproductive habits and take our art to higher levels.

Pressure and Release
The world's leading proponent of compression in t'ai chi ch'uan is Grandmaster William C. C. Chen. He describes compression this way:

"All the movements of Tai Chi Chuan are activated by pressure changes in the lower abdomen. As the pressure increases, the arms flow outward or upward. When it decreases, the arms move inward or downward. The arms never move by themselves."

To understand compression in this context, let's compare throwing a punch to opening of a jar of peanut butter. With the jar, you need maximum compression in the torso as you apply muscular torque to the lid. With the punch, you want optimal compression in the t'an t'ien (lower abdomen) as your fist arrives at its target. By optimal, I mean not too much, not too little.

As the punch arrives, your foot, knee, torso, arm, and hand must be aligned so that your energy moves in a congruent direction. This line from foot to hand must embody absolute hardness or the punch will have little power. At the moment of contact and in response to the contact, your compression will be at its relative maximum. It would make no sense to decompress at the moment you need your backstop the most. Decompression occurs afterward as you complete the follow through and drop your body into place for your next move.

As an internal martial artist, decompression also characterizes your resting state. You are very relaxed 99% of the time, and are able to generate explosive tension in an instant and along a specific line. You don't live your life primed like a bomb, compressed and ready to explode.

You inhaled to compress upon standing up, but this doesn't mean that you should inhale as you throw a punch. And you definitely should not hold your breath. It means that you compress by sinking and tensing slightly in the lower abdomen to energize the punch and are at relative maximum compression as the punch arrives. If you are at perfect compression, the tension in your abdomen will connect and energize the line of power going from your foot to your hand and the degree of compression will be dictated by the mass of the surface you are striking. You will be completely relaxed everywhere else in your body.

When using these mechanics to deliver the strike at speed, you will neither inhale nor exhale, at least not consciously. Nor, once again, will you hold your breath or block your breathing. Your breaths will naturally occur in harmony with your actions, which are energized and substantiated by compression in your belly. Immediately after each move arrives, everything will relax as you sink into preparedness for the moves to come, with breath entering or leaving your body as your movements dictate.

I also witnessed some demonstrations. On one occasion, I was in his apartment on the West Side of Manhattan when he demonstrated his art to a group of visitors. While explaining his theories, in a single movement he dropped into a crouch and threw three straight right-handed punches at the abdomen of three different observers. I heard three distinct sounds as his fist arrived at each man's belly, but I could only see one punch. Although I was standing no more than two feet from these men, I couldn't see the three punches that I heard arrive, each with a resounding pop.

There is no time for inhaling and exhaling in movement like this. Nor is it possible to holding one's breath. Grandmaster Chen demonstrated release, then contraction, then release in a lightning sequence that was driven by compression. As he explains it, "The force of a technique depends on the speed and magnitude of the pressure (and tension) change." As the quintessential body mechanic who lights up when talking about boxing, he doesn't elaborate on the ch'i aspect. "Just get there," he declares.

My back injury has forced me to look at things in new ways. In recent years, my exploration has turned away from boxing and even push-hands. For my body, I play the form with a focus on fluid movement, valid technique, and health, especially spinal health. For my inner life, I consider the form to be a moving meditation, and my purpose is to cultivate internal states characterized by peace of mind and the ongoing refinement of internal energies at multiple levels. While the path deeper into this art is without end, the use of breathing and compression described in this article gives me satisfaction in both inner and outer realms.

I hope that you find it useful in your practice.

For a while, you can concentrate on the double exhalations and let your inhalations come by themselves. When you feel ready to focus on the inhalations, direct them down to your abdomen in the initial moment of each move. You can gain 10-30% more power this way.

And, never, never hold your breath, Dude.